Agriculture

"Bulgaria has told the European Union it will ban the cultivation of crops with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) under EU rules that allow member states to opt out of GMO cultivation, the agriculture ministry said in a statement on Thursday."

"The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled revised rules aimed at better protecting farmworkers from pesticides, an overhaul that brings safeguards for agricultural laborers closer to parity with employees in other industries."

"Concerns about the world's most popular herbicide continue to mount, as U.S. agricultural experts note spreading weed resistance to glyphosate. As the key ingredient in Monsanto Co's Roundup herbicide products as well as about 700 other products, glyphosate is widely used on farms as well as residential lawns."

"Syria's civil war has prompted the first withdrawal of seeds from a 'doomsday' vault built in an Arctic mountainside to safeguard global food supplies, officials said on Monday."

"Things are starting to look up for the US’s flock of nearly 300 million egg-laying hens. Right now, approximately 96% of those chickens live in cages, with only about 67 to 86 square inches (170 to 220 cm) of usable space per bird. But that may soon change.

"Clout can be defined in many ways. In California's parched Central Valley farmlands, it's the ability to secure water."

"The federal government has settled a decades-old lawsuit with the nation's largest irrigation district, which has agreed in a tentative deal to clean up contaminated water in California's fertile Central Valley."

"Each year, Americans throw away about a third of the country's food supply. But today, the US Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency announced the country's first-ever food waste reduction goal, calling for a fifty percent reduction by 2030."

"France is to use a new European opt-out scheme to ensure a ban on the cultivation of genetically modified crops in the country remains in place, it said on Thursday."